Plus: I dont trust the swiffel screens. How are they made? The could break off the camera, just a fixed one is nice to have.
However, if it can get back on itself for protection, that'll be nice since I dont use the LCD screen, when you have a Top LCD.

The 60D has been moved downwards to D90 (or its impending replacement) level, which makes sense given the 7D went up to meet the D300s. The old 50D kinda sat in between where there isn't enough space any more. So for me, the 60D isn't "serious" enough for the price. For the money I'd just get another 7D if I needed a serious 2nd body.

SD only appears cheaper because it is so much lower in performance. Compare like with like and it'll be around the same. SD is the low end option, and gets fitted in cheaper and smaller cameras where it makes sense. CF is the performance/capacity option and currently used in higher end bodies. It is very hard to find any high speed high capacity SD cards, so it limits SD to less demanding applications.

Even now, I think the 50D is in some ways better than the 60D, for me.
No AF Micro ajust, and from CF to SD...Okay, I dont have that much CF cards and understand the simple SD cards, but hey: It's a semi pro camera, we are not talking about the 550D, dont we?
It likes it's just a 550D with better build quality.
Shame, Canon.
They better shouldnt have produced the 60D.

It's all to do with market positioning. The spiritual successor to the 50D is the 7D, even if the name isn't. The 60D is a new cheaper level which Canon needed above the xxxD line. I guess the name could be a bit misleading given recent history, but I can see why they did it.

Yes, marketing.
Canon are doing what Sony are doing: Make very many cameras so nobody could know which is the best camera, and what the diffrences are, only the more experienced people like us.
Many people should think the 7D is the best, but the 550D is the 7D with another body and a tad slower. But what about the 60D? And was the 50D not faster than the 60D? So, the 60D should be as fast as the 50D like the 40D was.
Only if you read much about this, you could understand this whole thing.

@popo SD might have been dragging behind CF for a little while, but expect the new SDXC standard to catch up with CF as soon as there's a bit of demand.

The big problem with SD compared to CF is the speed ratings, as the SD association have way too open-ended standards that allows the manufacturers of the SD cards too much room to play. I have Class 4 cards that are faster than Class 6 cards which makes no sense at all. With CF it's more down to the manufacturer and as such there seem to be a little bit more quality control, at least from the reputable memory makers.

Sadly SDXC doesn't appear to remedy this problem much, although we're meant to get cards with speeds of up to 104MB/s read and write speed, but I guess those won't be any cheaper than CF cards, if not even more expensive.

As with regards to the 60D, been seeing a lot of hate around the internet today with plenty people saying that they're going to move to Nikon or even Sony...

There isn't street price yet for 60D is there? So we're only comparing pretty much list price against street price of 7D. Like any other launch, the 60D will drop after launch to something more sensible.

Ooh, the 60D makes the move to the same battery as 5D2, 7D etc... finally ditching the old one used on xxD and older...

On the eventual faster SD, there'll no doubt be faster/bigger CF by then too. The dangers of comparing a future product with a current one, is the current one doesn't stay still either...

Overall, if Canon called the 60D something other than 60D, I don't think anyone would have minded. By calling it 60D, it will get compared to the 50D and previous directly, where it doesn't feel so good.

And finally, on the model thing, Canon only have as many current models as Nikon if you disregard the overlap of old and new replacing each other. So the Canon crop line is effectively 1000D, 550D, 60D, 7D, with Nikon's D3100, D5000, D90, D300s. Both of which are less than Sony, which I'm not even going to try listing...

I think they made a mistake to make the 60D a 7D-like camera, but by removing the AF Micro ajust (which even has the 550D) and going to SD...
The 7D is in my eyes the 60D, and the 60D an upgraded 550D with better body etc.

Well, SDXC is already available, but sadly there doesn't seem to be any particularly fast cards in the market, so we're still stuck with 20-30MB/s.

That said, wasn't CF meant to be changed to CFast? As there's a limit as to how fast CF cards can become due to the parallel interface the cards use, which is similar to IDE. Cfast are meant to use an interface similar to SATA with far less restrictions. Not sure if it's a real issue, but it's technically impossible to make CF cards with faster transfer speeds than 133MB/s. I guess it's not a big deal yet, as the fastest CF cards seem to be 90MB/s.

SDXC is specified to hit 104MB/s and then intended to scale all the way to 300MB/s. So scoff as much as you want at SD, but it's most likely going to replace CF unless CFast takes off, but it seems to be a bit of a non starter at the moment. I'm not sure about the speeds of CFast cards though, but the interface is good for speeds of up to 375MB/s.

As to the 60D, I was hoping for something that was going to be good for video, as I've started to do video work and although I have a camcorder, my 500D is actually better for certain things, especially dark products as there's far less noise introduced in the video in comparison to my AVCHD camcorder. I know this isn't the main selling point for most DSLR's but it's a very useful feature in some situations. It would also help having good auto focus in video for me, but manual focus is generally workable.

...Overall, if Canon called the 60D something other than 60D, I don't think anyone would have minded. By calling it 60D, it will get compared to the 50D and previous directly, where it doesn't feel so good...

Couldn't agree more. Loss of the joystick may be a major disincentive to those contemplating a move from the 40D or 50D and, while I'm still playing catchup after a break from the Wibbly Wobbly Web, I've yet to read how the plastic body is expected to perform regarding weather sealing or durability.

I've gone on record elsewhere on the forum about there being little room for a true successor to the 50D given the price and features of the 7D and the message mow seems clear: the xxD line is no longer "semi-pro". The 60D will provide the perception of an upgrade for some but probably has much more relevance when compared to the opposition's offerings. For semi-pro APS-C the 7D is the only Canon game in town until, and if, the reviewers prove otherwise...

CF is electrically the same as the PATA interface used in computers previously. The highest defined speed for it was 133MB/s so that follows through to CF. Through the updates to the standard over the years, it has maintained good backwards compatibility unlike the SD to SHDC move. And old host might not recognise the capacity of a new card, but will still be able to write to it in limited capacity. A top end card like Sandisk Extreme Pro is rated for 90MB/s. If the rest of the system is up to it, it delivers that speed for reads and writes. So we are running out of headroom for future cards although there's a bit of life left yet. CFast copies the PC's move to SATA, which at a basic level is 3 Gbit/s (about 375MB/s) although on PCs the 6 Gbit standard is filtering through to remove that bottleneck for SSDs. Unfortunately PATA and SATA are physically and electrically incompatible so would require an interface change. Why not just make the move to SDXC if you have to move anyway? The bigger form factor does help make adoption of higher capacity and speed devices easier as early devices tend to be lower density, so would benefit from the additional space. They could more easily mirror SSD development, and with an internal raid provide significantly higher speeds than space constrained SD family allows. With the required change in form factor, I'd guess they'll be delaying the switch as much as possible anyway, but the interface has a lot more headroom to take it beyond the time SDXC has run out of steam and needs yet another format change.

Anyway, I think we might have drifted a little off topic there. Neither standard change is going to worry me much in the foreseeable future given today's affordable speeds and capacities, so I'll worry about it when it happens.

Back on 60D, has anyone written about it's contrast AF performance yet? I assume it's much the same as other Canons but I live in hope they did something there to improve it.